Old So What

  We’re tired of the gloomy weather of winter just dragging on. Enough already! Enough! Good riddance to snow and ice that clog the power lines, and shut us off from the rest of the world. Enough to the exorbitant costs of heating fuel, and the guy who shovels my snow (who must go home each night to the mansion that I and his other victims have paid for.) We want warmth and plenty of it; we want flowers, sunlight, a cheerful spring, birds tweeting, bugs doing whatever it is bugs do. Yes, birds and their tweeting, PLEASE!

  Seasons come and go all on their own.   No one cues them; gives them the “all clear.” They just get on with it, and show up at our doors, on our roofs, in our gardens. Summer leaves us with no kicking and screaming, though some of us would do so if it would help. With winter shoved into our lives whether we want it or not.   Which we do not…most decidedly want:   The cold mornings, the expensive heating fuel, the scratchy sweaters, the cold coffee, the gray, bleak days, which seem to last forever.   Just d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g on. Until one morning while taking out the trash, we feel the soft caress, and sweet kiss of spring. Oh, thank goodness, sanity and beauty return!

  Every spring I’m confronted with the same problem: Bugs.   Relatively easily solved by the annual, sometimes biannual, calling of the exterminator (who sprays only in the basement and around the outside of the house). Now picture a Warner Bros. cartoon of an ant.   This would have the mandatory huge anthropomorphic (having human characteristics), cartoon eyeballs of exaggerated size. And a large head, wearing a big smile. With the beginning of the spring season comes the scout ants. They burst upon the scene to literally scout the scene.   What’s happening, any predators around, is this safe, any food? I envision one specific ant who I actually saw appear on my kitchen counter in a ceremony of great expectation on its part.   It was heaped in the enthusiasm of the very young. As it actually was. How did I respond to this appearance? I crushed the little twerp! Right there and then. But not without any regret. Here was a tiny being whom I always r...

  Are here and aren’t they lovely and hopeful? They come to us while it’s still chilly almost as if they’re saying, “We can’t wait, we want life now!” If spring is hopeful, then surely cherry blossoms are their cheerleaders.   We love these exquisite visions of happiness.